European Remote Sensing Forest/Non-forest Digital Map

The European Remote Sensing Forest/Non-forest Digital Map was originally prepared for the European Space Agency (ESA) as a contribution to the World Forest Watch project of the International Space Year (ISY), 1992. The actual production of the map was carried out by a consortium of four companies, GAF mbH (Munich FRG), the Swedish Space Corporation (Kiruna), SCOT Conseil (France) and the National Land Survey of Finland (Helsinki). It is based entirely on the digital classification of NOAA/ AVHRR-HRPT (Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer sensor - High Resolution Picture Transmission data) one-kilometer resolution multispectral data, approximately 70 scenes from the summer periods only of 1990 to 1992.

Only data from AVHRR channels 1, 2 and 3 with maximal geometric and radiometric resolution; that is, the central 1200 to 1600 pixels of any given scan line, was used to map European forest areas greater than one square kilometer. Because the AVHRR sensor is not capable of distinguishing among different European forest types, many broad classes (Boreal, Central European and Mediterranean) are grouped together as forest in the digital map.

For the 32 Landsat scenes compared with the NOAA/AVHRR forest/ non-forest classification, the overall accuracy (percentage of pixels correctly classified) was calculated as 82.5%, and the surface area accuracy (degree of agreement in areal extent between the NOAA/AVHRR results and the Landsat MSS used as ground truth) was found to be 93.8%.

Because the methodology used to produce the digital map is documented and was economically accomplished, the product is presumably replicable and could therefore be updated and/or used for monitoring purposes at scales of up to 1:2 million. See the summary documentation file for a description of the steps used by the consortium in the production of the digital map.

The source of the data set is the European Space Agency/European Space Research and Technology Centre, International Space Year (ESA/ESTEC ISY) Office (Noordwijk, The Netherlands), as modified by UNEP/GRID-Geneva. The proper reference to the data set is ESA, 1992, Remote sensing forest map of Europe (brochure), ESA/ESTEC, 18 pages. ESA/ESTEC also provides a paper entitled Digital data set of the remote sensing forest map of Europe; guidelines for data handling (as prepared by GAF-Munich in April 1993), which contains much useful information about their original digital data product and the seven individual data files they distribute as one entity. In addition, ESA/ESTEC distributes a paper map of the original product having the same name as above, at a scale of 1:6,000,000 (the paper map uses the Lambert Azimuthal Equal-Area projection).

Users who would prefer to have other original portions of the European Forest/Non-forest Digital Map listed above, as opposed to the GRID version documented herein, are requested to contact ESA/ESTEC at P. O. Box 299; 2200 AG Noordwijk, The Netherlands (Mr. K. Pseiner; fax = 01719- 17400).